


Sail

by MonsterTesk



Category: Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:18:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5176664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterTesk/pseuds/MonsterTesk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is the only betrayal that can never be forgiven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sail

**Author's Note:**

> "I have no armour left. You've stripped it from me. Whatever is left of me - whatever is left of me - whatever I am - I'm yours."

James remembers watching a sailboat slowly sink into the ocean as a child. He remembers thinking not that the captain had been foolish but that the ocean was incomprehensibly vast and powerful. He remembers how tightly his mother had held his hand as they sat on the cold November beach and watched. 

"Don't look away," she had whispered. "This deserves better than that," when he had tried to turn his head. 

 

 

Later on, when he's older and contemplating how easy it is, how simple it is, to take a life that his mother and him had not been bystanders but witnesses and that all loss required someone to remember it to be real. 

 

 

 

Vesper... Was real. As was the click of betrayal as she locked that lift gate, the swooping sensation of being so close but never within reach as her eyes widened and the force of the sinking lift had pressed her against the opposite wall and pushed the air right out of her lungs. 

Her lips had still been warm when he fruitlessly tried to resuscitate. 

Effortlessly, thoughtlessly, she had abandoned him. 

 

But he had not abandoned her. That ironic smile and sarcastic tone that had tied him inextricably to her from the first moment they had met were still there. Like a red thread of malcontent, his fighting, killing, became less clinical and more brutal with every time he thought about the way her hair had drifted in the water around her. Ophelia's crown, he had not thought. Though, in retrospect, it had been appropriate. 

 

 

It wasn't that he thought about joining her so much as he thought he already had. That he was supposed to. He did, after all, belong to her. 

If all that was left of him, if everything he was was taken away, destroyed, consumed by shades in the dark of day, if all that remained were a smiling pinkie finger then there would still be a million million cells signed as, "Property of V.L." 

 

He had been cold, standing in the balcony of that villa, as Mathis had said, "the villains and heroes get all mixed up." 

His stomach had tied itself into an Algerian love knot. Nothing could untangle him. Only her. 

 

But that's the point in supplication. That's what he gave up. It's her fault and his that he became obsolete. After all, what good is a pilgrim whose holy kiss is as saturated as the lungs of the one he worships? Especially when the act of trying to preserve life is as much an affront to the worshipped's decree as the most cardinal sin of trust. 

 

 

 

It was never grief that drove him. No matter how many times Mathis or M or Camille or Fields thought and said as much. It was, as it would ever be, duty to the power he had surrendered himself to. 

 

 

But he knows, knows with every move and every death, that this is as she wanted. Because she was not gentle, because she was deceptive and cruel, because she willingly left. Because she knew, far before he did, that an instrument works best when the power controlling it is unseen. 

 

 

 

Of course the whole thing was about water. It always would be for him. This is as it should be when one worships a drowned god. 

 

Although it's not until the building is on fire, falling down around him, that he Knows he has done her bidding. The sprinklers come on, cooling his heated skin, filling his lungs as he fights with the fury and wrath of gods. Benediction will be his, he thinks, as he holds onto a man by his hair, grasps with the strength he didn't have to hold on to her, to stay hers. 

 

The bullet pierced his mind far before he fully registered the noise. Greene laughs, clawing at anything solid to stay afloat. 

 

James abandoned him there. He ran. He ran as fast and as hard as he could because she was not like Her. Her element was weaker, shorter lived, unstable. Water is eternal but fire burns hot and fast and dies once it has consumed its offerings. 

 

When the wall falls and he sees that tank. When the fire bursts outward and takes the wall with it, when he sees Greene in the distance, he knows. 

He has done what she required. 

 

 

 

 

James knows it's done. Over. As he walks away from the building where he found the serpent who squirmed its way into her garden. He can't move on, no; there is nothing beyond her, passed her, above her, but– with this act he may have earned his death. 

 

 

Capricious, inexplicable, complicated.  It takes him a long time to rationalize why she doesn't let him die then. 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a train. And a bullet. There's the long drop and the short stop right into the water. He thinks, for what feels like eternity, that this is her way of taking him back. A crash right into the river. 

 

 

It isn't. 

 

 

But he gets the message. He stays by the coast, doesn't stray far from the water. He lives his nights as if they were all his last and he'd never met her. He sleeps through the day like the dead who will not have him. James dreams. Often. Of drowning in her broken wine glass. The one she had knocked over after he killed those men in front of her. He dreams of sitting quietly next to her under the spray of the shower until her cheeks turned pink and life restored itself to her eyes. 

 

 

 

It changes. The TV tells him her country is in danger, that fire has destroyed that old place of worship of his. 

 

 

M tests him as she's wont to do. He doesn't remember a time when someone wasn't testing him. It seems the results are, as always, inconclusive. 

 

 

 

 

James sits in front of a painting of an old ship. It's quiet here. So quiet he can nearly hear his mother's voice telling him not to look away. Nearly, nearly, he can nearly think on the way Vesper's mouth had moved under the water; how words had turned to pockets of air, little balls of escaped gas, as she tried to communicate with him. 

 

"Always makes me feel a little melancholy," he says. 

 

James does not turn, does not look at him, only sees the shine of the ocean just as deep and effortlessly powerful in portrait as in person. 

"What do you see?" 

James focuses, tries to see something aside from wet and grace and power beyond him but–

"A bloody big ship." 

 

The kid smiles. Talks back. He's quick and wry. That's not why James decides to accept this change. 

 

 

 

It takes him a long time. Still waters may run deep but the vastness of the solitary ocean he has drowned himself in is syrup-slow and crawling. 

 

 

 

There. Just... There. Behind the fringe and the glasses. Underneath. 

An ironic smile, sarcastic tone, cutting words, demands that tax his abilities, and, above all else, eyes as deep and as endless as the ocean. 

 

 

Sometimes, James becomes afraid he'll get lost in them, run afoul and sink slowly and surely until whatever he is- whatever is left of him- whatever... Whatever makes him James, will become obscured, overcome. Taken over. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q... Is. Very much so. And he doesn't seem interested in changing that anytime soon. His voice is always, always, in James' ear. Constant and rhythmic. As steady and as predictable like the tide when one's back is turned. The voice tells him when to turn, how to move, who to kill, who to leave breathing. 

 

 

James is, now as ever, the tool but, now, as never, the hand that guides him, that tells him who to visit his wrath upon is clear, steady, and not leaving him anywhere. 

 

 

The thing is that he cannot worship Q the way he worshipped Vesper. She was soft and calling and open. Q is not. And so he does what he can. Listens when he’s able. Returns nothing that is given to him. It’s not Christmas. It’s no holiday sailing the world with soft smiles and softer lips. It’s hard words and the sharp lines of computer keys but… 

 

 

He can’t look away. He has never been able to look away. Trust is no betrayal here and air is an element that only James can reach. Q is grounded, water-logged, and mired in one location. He is the stubborn tree that still grows yet when the river has changed course, flows fast and unforgiving around him. 

 

 

 

 

 

But when sharp lips meet his, willowy hands wrap around his arms and guide, that earthy scent overcomes him, controls him. He can do nothing but receive this benediction, tread water and breath in starts and stops. He does not know how to do this, not here in this context. 

 

It matters little. 

 

 

As always, James’ pantheon takes what it desires and hollows him out. He expects soft words with the sunrise. “Oh, James”es and declarations of something beyond him. It does not come. He is not disappointed. Instead, as the sun wakes, this new addition to James’ religion leans over him, treads lips across his stubbled cheek, hands diving down and down his back. “Go shave,” the voice says. “You look like a lost dog.” 

 

James does as he is bid and is rewarded with the slide of teeth across his chin, the intrusion of want into his body. He welcomes it, helpless to resist. 

 

 

“Oh.” he hisses. “Oh, god,” as this body moves above him, around him, in him. 

“Not quite,” Q laughs, dips down to leave a boon of sensation on James’ skin that skitters around and causes all of his nerves to shiver at once.

 

James watches Q, the morning light haloing his dark hair bright, a ripple of something triumphant across his face as he moves, as he claims James for his own. He can’t look away. He doesn’t want to. This, he decides, deserves better than that. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned that if this doesn't make sense that's because I wrote this in spurts while actually watching the movies.


End file.
